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Apr 11thReading stage 2: Intelligence and Genius

What is the difference between intelligence (IQ) and genius (very high level of IQ)?

Everyone knows the famous names in history, men and women who made a huge contributionto (something you do to help something happen) their fields (areas of work). But what is genius?

“There’s no one way to define genius,” Haier says (1). “For example, the high end of the IQ spectrum (picture below) can be considered (be thought about as) genius.”

Geniuses are certainly very smart. So, if you peek (look quickly at) inside the head of one of the best and brightest (smartest), is the brain any different than average?

“It must be,” says Rex Jung (2). “Environment is going to make a huge change. Researchers believe that every brain does not work the same way. A “smart brain” works in many ways, and men and women with the same IQ may have different structures.”

Can we consider high IQ and genius as the ability to successfully solve problems 95 percent of the time?

The ability to solve the rare (not seen or found very often) problem is what separates smart from genius. “There are different networks in the brain that seem to do deductive reasoning, and those networks that are bigger, stronger and faster will be successful most of the time,” Jung says. “Creativity is the other network. It is slower, and allows for all the processes to run (work) together. [deductive reasoning is using the knowledge and information that you have to form opinion about something. Sherlock Holmes, for example, used deduction reasoning to solve difficult problems, no one else could.]

So, creativity is “the secret sauce” of genius, which leverages (uses) intelligence. “These two reasoning processes are highly adaptive (change gradually), but the ability to think outside the box (find new ideas) with creativity, through deductive reasoning, is genius,” Jung explains.

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(۱) Ph.D, a professor emeritus in the Pediatric Neurology Division of the School of Medicine at University of California, Irvine.

(۲) a neuroscientist, brain-imaging researcher and assistant professor of neurosurgery at the University of New Mexico.